The invention relates to computer techniques, and in particular, to boot methods and computers utilizing the same.
Computers can serve as information appliances, such as TVs or Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) players, providing multimedia playing functions utilizing Microsoft Windows. It is time consuming, however, to boot up and shut down a computer before and after playing multimedia.
In a conventional solution to this problem, another operating system (OS) requiring less boot time is installed in another partition. A hard disk typically supports four partitions. Different operating systems typically supporting different file systems must be installed in different partitions. Thus, installation of the other OS occupies at least one partition.
Additionally, different from installation of general applications, installation of an additional OS requires rebooting a target computer with a boot disk, which is also inconvenient.